John William Waterhouse, 1849-1917
By Alice Lindman
The Lady of Shalott, 1888, oil on canvas
John William Waterhouse was a man of many national influences, not just in his personal life, but also in his art. Despite being one of the most highly acclaimed artists of his generation, one encounters problems of evaluation due to the minimal information that exists about Waterhouse. His personality was mentioned sparingly by his contemporaries, and his letters remain almost non-existent. It is therefore unsurprising that Waterhouse’s artworks inspire endless and varied interpretations. With the burning questions about the artist difficult to answer solely through scholarly evidence of Waterhouse’s life, focus must be placed upon the art constituting Waterhouse’s oeuvre. His art has thus become the ultimate source for understanding his inner psyche.
What art historians do know is that artistic blood always flowed through his veins, having been born in 1849 to two painters. Waterhouse spent the first five years of his life in Rome, after which he moved to England. As a young artist, Waterhouse worked as an assistant in his father’s studio. Not long thereafter, Waterhouse enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art Schools, was later elected as Associate, and ultimately gained full membership. While the artist’s body may have mostly been in the British Isles after his childhood, his heart remained scattered across the European continent. This is evident through Waterhouse’s changing experimentation with composition, technique, and theme. The early part of Waterhouse’s career was focused on depicting classical themes, but he quickly redefined himself as what initially seems to be a Pre-Raphaelite, just as the dominant British style was going out of fashion. Waterhouse is therefore most known for his dream-like depictions of femme fatales, damsels in distress, and other characters from mythical narrative poems, the muse of his paintings always depicted in the most dramatic of moments.
Arguably Waterhouse’s most career-defining artwork, which is key to understanding his varied influences, is his painting The Lady of Shalott of 1888. Painting en plein-air, Waterhouse based the subject on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem of the same name (Tennyson was a favourite among the pre-Raphaelites). In the poem, the Lady of Shalott, living isolated in a castle along the river, is cursed never to look out of her window. Yet she defies the spell cast upon her by gazing upon the knight Lancelot; upon her voyage down the river to unite with him in Camelot, the curse activates, killing her before she can complete her journey. The Lady of Shalott was a common muse among the Pre-Raphaelites, yet, while most of his contemporaries freeze her in her moment of transgression, Waterhouse depicts her in the boat to Camelot. With this change in focus, a sense of foreboding becoming almost palpable. Only one of the three candles on the prow of boat remains lit, and the Lady’s name is barely visible, while the tower she dared to escape is now a blur in the background; allegories of death are unescapable, predicting her fast-approaching demise. Waterhouse’s portrait is therefore one depicting the common contemporary theme of a tragic woman victimised by love.
Yet despite utilising Pre-Raphaelite themes, Waterhouse does not utilise all the usual Pre-Raphaelite painting techniques. Rather, Waterhouse painted in what was often called ‘the French style’ by contemporaries. His canvases, littered with visible broad brushstrokes, create a sense of movement and shifting perspective with every appliance of paint. Such techniques connect Waterhouse with the French Impressionist painters of the same era, and thus Waterhouse occupies an ambiguous arena of legacy devoid of a single, identifiable geographical locale. The artist remained split between nations for the entirety of his career, depicting the mythical stories and poets of the Pre-Raphaelites in an inarguably European style until his death in 1917.
Bibliography
“John William Waterhouse 1849-1917.” Tate. Published 2009. Accessed 28 March 2024. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-william-waterhouse-583.
Peeters, Nic. “Study Day Report: ‘John William Waterhouse’ Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 2 September 2009.” The British Art Journal 10, no. 2 (2009): 83–84.
Portugeis, Chloe. “John William Waterhouse, the Lady of Shalott.” SmartHistory. Accessed 28 March 2024. https://smarthistory.org/waterhouse-the-lady-of-shalott/.
Silver, Carole G. Review of Waterhouse Revisited, by J. W. Waterhouse, Elizabeth Prettejohn, Peter Trippi, Robert Upstone, and Patty Wageman. Victorian Literature and Culture 39, no. 1 (2011): 263–69.